-Danger,Deceit-
Book 01.: Fire Nation
Chapter .02: RUMORS
[What is told in the ear of a man is often heard one hundred miles away.]
- Chinese Proverb
Maha was on her the instant Mai crossed the threshold.
"Young Mistress, forgive my presumption," the elderly steward murmured, startling Mai with his sudden, silent appearance at her elbow. Maha fluttered a hand at the door attendant, who obediently secured the iron lattice before disappearing off to wherever it was servants went once they had done their job. "This evening, we must review the quarterly household and estate finances," Maha continued, his thick white eyebrows twitching up and down with every word, a nervous tic that afflicted the man as far back as Mai could remember. Today it annoyed her more than it usually did.
"Right, after dinner," she agreed, heading toward the stairs and the sanctuary of her own room. It had been nearly a year since the Office of Registry and Censors had officially declared her parents and brother dead, and two months since she had legally become an adult – and yet the man still called her "Young Mistress," as if he were expecting the "rightful" owners of the mansion to come waltzing in through the front door any moment! 'To be fair, you haven't made much point of correcting him, have you?' an inner voiced chided. 'He's an old man, set in his ways. He was Grandfather's servant, for Agni's sake.' Mai supposed she could bring it up with Maha that evening. Though now, of course, this meant she'd never get those targets she wanted…
"Young Mistress?"
Mai sighed, feeling the corner of her left eye twitch, but she composed herself before turning back to her steward. "What else is there, Maha?" she asked in the flat voice all the family servants knew indicated their mistress's displeasure about something.
Maha did not seem to notice, carrying on in the same soft, half-apologetic, half-stern way of his. "Your aunt, Lady Chyou, and her son are waiting for you in the garden. Her letter did say that she was returning today and that she expected to call on you this afternoon." That was one thing about Maha: he could lecture even when he was being deferential. Mai had a brief flash back to the time when she was five and had "accidentally" slipped ink into her horrid governess's tea. The man had never raised his voice the whole time, but her ears still burned at the memory. "As I did not know where the Young Mistress had gone or when you would return from your... appointment, I had a light late tea set for them in the gazebo, as I thought you might deem appropriate."
"Thank you, Maha," Mai said, biting back on the retort that it was not his job to know where she was going and when she was coming back home. Her parents had never been so nosey! "I'll join her now. Have a room prepared in case she wants to spend the night."
"Very good, Young Mistress," Maha agreed with a bow and an approving crinkle of his thin lips.
Mai decided to ignore that. 'I need a break,' she sighed, heading through the main sitting room and the screen doors beyond.
The walled plot behind her mansion could not hold a candle to even the smallest Palace side garden, but its privacy and intimacy was something Mai enjoyed on occasion. Careful landscaping created a stylized vision of a forest glade in miniature; the lacy fingered leaves of the five-flame maples turned color with the seasons, casting cool purple shadows now in the height of summer. Along the east wall, a small "stream" wended down to the moon-mirror pool, the current residence of a lone miniature elephant-koi. The rarest plant in the garden was the seven hundred year-old dwarf paper-juniper in its massive earthenware pot back by the south wall. The rock plum bending over it like a graceful daughter doting on her squat, decrepit father never failed to bloom with spectacular, pink-tinted flowers every spring.
The red-painted wooden gazebo in the center served as both the focal point of the garden and its singular eyesore. An overly-ornate, clumsy knock-off of the Royal Crimson Pavilion on Ember Island, her father had added it shortly before the family had been sent overseas to his governorship in newly-conquered Omashu. 'I really should have that thing torn down,' she reminded herself, yet again.
Tonk!
Dragon-flies, flashing green and gold in the late afternoon sun, danced around the trickle of water filling the hollowed joint of bamboo perched on the lip of the fox-deer scarer. Just as it overflowed, the bamboo tipped over, emptying into the deep stone basin the fed the garden's "stream" and springing upright almost immediately, striking the lip with another soft tonk!
"Hello, Xue," Mai said to the young boy leaning against the basin. He was ignoring the bright flight of dragon-flies in favor of watching the cycle of filling and emptying with the intensity of a raven-eagle staring at a lure.
" 'llo, Mai," he replied unexpectedly, not looking away as water sluiced into the bamboo.
"Have you and your mother been waiting long?" she asked, making an effort to be polite to her cousin.
Xue shrugged, totally absorbed with the bamboo-and-stone contraption.
'Simple minds, simple pleasures,' Mai decided. She was just glad Xue had not taken it to mind to take the thing apart again. 'Maybe I should set him loose on the gazebo...' It was hard to remember if Xue had always been like this; he was too young to have been of any interest to her even before his father had been killed at the North Pole, and his mother seemed helpless to do anything about his sulky, withdrawn attitude since. 'Poor Aunty Chyou, having to put up with such a moody brat, like she doesn't have enough problems…'
"Mai-dear!" Chyou hurried down the gazebo steps and swept Mai into an enthusiastic hug.
"Hi, Aunty," Mai said, wrapping her arms around the woman in return and feeling a tiny bit of her irritation slip out of her as she rested her cheek against the white silk of her aunt's mourning veil. Aunt Chyou was soft and smelled good, like down-stuffed pillows aired in summer sunlight, nothing at all like her fashionably thin, expensively perfumed mother had. (Mai had once announced this observation at one of her mother's garden parties, when a guest wondered aloud why the four year-old was clinging so stubbornly to her aunt. Aunt Chyou was the only one to laugh, and her visits became few and far between after that.)
"How was your trip?" Mai asked, ignoring the unwanted memory in favor of following her aunt back into the gazebo.
"A bit of hard work, a lot of fun, but it's good to be home. We completed the second ward, which means a hundred more beds, an expanded pharmacy, and a new surgery," the older woman replied, slipping around the crowded tea table and taking her seat on the padded bench opposite the steps. She waved Mai to sit next to her, beaming her I've-got-something-to-show-you smile. Though not "pretty" by most standards, Mai at least could see why people called Chyou "attractive," especially the way her smiles lit up her already warm brown eyes. Small wonder she had been such a popular performer, back in the day. "They're building up the town as well, to give the families of our patients a place to stay. And wouldn't you know it, but there's this young chef, the nephew of one of our surgeons who just opened his own bakery there, and when he heard how much you love fruit tarts…"
With a flourish worthy of a stage magician, her aunt produced a square black lacquer box one might easily mistake for a document case if not for the name "Mingyu's White Jade Specialty Pastries, Liao Yang Island" painted in exquisite calligraphy on the red paper "ribbon" wrapped around it. Mai smiled even as she shook her head, being careful not to tear the ribbon as she slipped it off the box. Lifting the lid, she found five different miniature fruit tarts nestled in white silk and thick paper, still cool from whatever cold storage space her aunt had wrangled on the boat home.
"I know you like them with sugared rose petals," Chyou continued with a wistful sigh, "but they're not in season anymore, so…"
"No, no, these are fine. Thanks, Aunty," Mai said. She was hardly hungry, but it would be an insult to her aunt if she did not at least sample one of the tarts.
"I think you'll like the red-and-black lacquer berry tart best, although that white jade apple tart is what Mingyu's bakery is famous for," her aunt mentioned helpfully.
Mai divvied up the two tarts so named, half of each between the pair of them. Chyou smiled at this careful exhibition of manners, pouring fragrant jasmine tea into a clean cup for Mai. "Does Xue want any?" Mai asked, looking to the corner of the garden. Xue had wandered off somewhere while they were talking. She hoped he had gone inside where he would at least be under Maha's watchful eye.
"I'll keep these for him if he does," Chyou said, a worried frown flitting over her face as she moved her plate to one side and covered it with a napkin. She played with her empty teacup, rolling it between the palms of her hands. "I'd hoped he'd make friends with the children of the doctors and administrators, but he didn't want to have anything to do with them after the first day or so," she confessed, sounding more as if she were thinking aloud than speaking to her niece. "He'd wander off, and we'd find him, hours later, walking around wards, not talking to any of the patients, just… looking. Maybe it was a mistake, bringing him to a place full of wounded soldiers and sailors…"
Mai stabbed a bit of apple tart with her fork and slipped it into her mouth to give her an excuse not to say anything. 'Pretty good,' she thought, concentrating on the sweet-sour-sweet tang of apple and hints of pearl apricot glaze, rather than the way her aunt was dabbing around her eyes with her fingertips.
"So…!" Suddenly, Chyou was all sunshine and smiles. Mai was never certain if her aunt's mood swings were genuine (like Ty lee's had been), or if she just used her stagecraft to smooth over awkward situations. "What's been going on up at the Palace while I was away?"
Mai wondered if she could get away with stuffing another bite of tart in her mouth to avoid answering.
"Ah, but I suppose you're too busy with your studies to hear any fun rumors and such," her aunt pouted before Mai could take action either way. She propped her chin up on her hand and teased Mai's bangs. "With the Examinations coming up in just five months, you probably can't even spare a single moment to mingle in the Outer Courtyard!"
There were times when Chyou could be as subtle as Maha when it came to lecturing. This was not one of them. Mai knew that her aunt knew she was not studying at all, and Chyou knew Mai knew that she knew it. She probably even knew why Mai was neglecting her studies. All the same, she met her aunt's pointed look with nary a twitch. "Hm," Chyou replied, arching an eyebrow. "But a young woman can't spend her time cooped up in a library studying. Why don't you take one of the prepatory courses the Academy offers for alumni? You might even find a worthy study partner or two, or at least someone less diligent and more chatty."
"I'll look into it," Mai allowed, taking a sip of tea.
Chyou beamed, accepting the victory without further comment. "Well, since you don't have any gossip for your aunty, Aunty had some fresh-delivered," she chirped, reaching over to the bench opposite Mai and bringing out a slim leather scroll case, whose bronze, phoenix-head endcaps Mai instantly recognized.
"Aunty Chyou," she groaned as Chyou twisted one end open and began pulling out roll after tissuey roll of fragile paper, "not the gossip sheets!"
"Your fault for not having any for me, when I brought you back such a nice souvenir," said Chyou with a nod at Mai's nearly empty plate.
Mai dead-panned. 'I swear she makes a hobby out of teasing me,' she thought, sighing into her teacup as Chyou carefully unrolled one of the delicate bits of paper.
"You have to admire "Lady Rou-boa-zi," whoever she really is," Chyou was saying, skimming the minute pink characters printed on the sheet before tossing it over her shoulder and picking up another one. "I remember, when I was your age, the gossip collectors were so disorganized – they used to write them all by hand, and they all used the same color inks, so you never knew if you were getting a scroll from "Chou-Hua the Scandal Queen" or "Zhi-Shi the Finder." Very messy, and of course, easy to trace, so there was always the danger that… aha!" Chyou waved a bit of crimson-printed paper at her. "This should interest you. Another clan will be nominating one of their daughters to marry the Fire Lord. That would make… three, no, four now, in as many days, if what I heard on the boat was true!"
Mai bit down on her tongue, hard, and took a swig of tea. "Good for them," she commented after managing to swallow.
"Mai-dear, don't pretend like that," Chyou admonished, her cheerful tone not doing the least bit to mask the concern with which she looked at her niece. "These are… sensitive times, and it's never a bad idea to learn what you're up against."
"I'm not 'up against' anything, Aunty," replied Mai, working to keep her voice level. "And I don't think I'd learn anything useful from gossip collected by minor noblewomen with too much time and not enough secretary busy-work to do."
"At least get to know what's being said and what other people are planning," Chyou argued gently, reading from the sheet. "Hm, so it's the Tuan clan now… Priya, daughter of the Minister of Education and Examinations. She's older than the Fire Lord, though the difference is hardly that big; the candidate from the Shé clan is four years older than he is, and she was serving in the Navy, of all places!"
'…"Navy"? Why does that…?' wondered Mai, but Chyou interrupted her with a sudden "Oho!"
"What now?" Mai asked, dismissing the bothersome train of thought.
"It says here there's a good chance that the girl isn't the Minister's legitimate daughter, that her mother had a fling with some earthbender when they were still stationed on the Continent," Chyou informed her breathlessly, touching a finger to her chin. "How bold! The girl must be quite extraordinary if Minister Loc's going to bank his clan's reputation on her!"
'Oh, that's right, Loc's the Tuan clan leader,' Mai thought, recalling her earlier conversation with Zuko while her aunt chattered on about the Foreign Ministry for whatever reason. 'Bet that means she's as much a hard-up traditionalist as that one Onion Bun girl, what's-her-face…'
"… and Murni of Clan Xú! That's the name I couldn't remember."
"What?" Mai demanded. She dropped her hands into her lap, clasping them together against the irrational impulse to yank out one of her daggers.
Chyou was regarding her with undisguised sympathy now. "So, you've met her?" she asked.
"No! Yes… sort of," Mai muttered, twining her fingers tightly around each other as she remembered what she had said to Zuko before stalking off and leaving him with that… that…! 'Playing innocent, like it was such an accident she found us!' A small part of her whispered that she was being paranoid, that there was no way Murni could have known they would go to that particular room at that particular time. 'And if she'd been following you, I'd think you'd have noticed,' it added.
'All right, so she wasn't stalking him, but I went and left him alone with her, there's no telling…!'
'This is Zuko we're talking about. It took you throwing a knife at his head and him falling into a fountain before he realized you liked him. Do you really think a bean-counter's going to have the guts to pull something like that in the Inner Palace, or that Zuko's going to have any idea she's flirting with him if she does anything less?'
'… Heh. I'd almost let her try, just to watch.'
"I think we've had enough of the gossip sheets for the time being," Chyou said, uneasy with the abrupt silence that followed her niece's outburst. She swept the unopened scrolls back into the case and put it aside. "There's another thing, Mai-dear," she said after several moments of circling her fingertip around rim of her teacup. "It's actually the main reason I came to see you today."
Mai looked at her aunt, not liking the way she kept playing with her teacup instead of talking to her. "Grandmother Sharanya sent me a letter while I was on Liao Yang. She'll be arriving on the mainland tonight, and taking up residence in the clan house on the East Face."
Mai went cold. "Don't tell me she's expecting a coup to break out again," she said with a smirk, trying to make light of the situation. Her great-grandmother, leader of the Sun clan, was something of a famous, even legendary, figure in Fire Nation politics, being the first female minister in the country's history, at the leading edge of Fire Lord Azulon's far-reaching reforms. Even though it had been fifteen years since she last served in any official capacity, her rare visits to the main island could be counted on to stir up all sorts of rumors. The very fact that she had not come to the capital two years ago, when it seemed the country was a powder keg waiting for an opportune spark, had fueled speculation as to whether or not the matriarch was expressing her trust in or distance from the new Fire Lord with her absence. 'Why would the Ghost Washer Hag be coming out now?' Mai thought. She had not seen the woman in almost three years, not since her father had dragged her family to the clan estate down south to pay their respects before shipping out to Omashu. Even now, Mai could recall the cold needles that prickled her spine when she dared to look up into the ancient woman's startlingly clear but cold pale brown eyes; they looked like they belonged more to a scorpion-snake than a person.
"I don't know," Chyou replied, a note of anxiety creeping into her voice. "But she mentioned that she wanted to see you in particular, so I thought it best to come home so I could be here when she called for you."
"She's coming out of her cave to see me?" Mai asked, forgetting to curb her tongue in her shock. "But… she didn't even send a letter when my parents were declared dead, why does she suddenly care about me now?"
"I don't know," her aunt repeated, pulling her niece into a hug. "Whatever it is, I'll be right here for you, all right, Mai-dear?"
In her aunt's arms, Mai had a momentary, wild thought of simply ignoring the summons of the clan matriarch when they came, but a small voice pointed out, 'At the very least, running away from the clan leader just shows you're scared of her.' Which she most certainly was not.
"Maybe she just wants to make sure you're prepared for your Examinations," Chyou volunteered suddenly. "Being an ex-Minister of Justice, I bet she's got all sorts of great study tips for you!"
There was a beat of silence before Mai snorted and Chyou laughed out loud.
A/N: Mai might be having a tough time of it, but really, I (almost) feel sorry for Zuko, since the prospective fiancees seem to be strong-minded, capable women.
The Chinese Imperial Examinations [Keju] are the basis for the "Examinations" mentioned in this chapter. It makes sense that a nation as efficient and imperialistic as the Fire Nation would have an (ideally) meritocratic system by which its government bureaucracy is selected from the best and brightest of the country. Any character mentioned as having an official ministry position in the national government took the test at the national level, which is administered every two years by royal decree.
Mai's reference to the "Ghost Washer Hag" is actually from Gaelic stories about the ghost washer-women [bean nighe] who clean the robes of the dead at the river that leads into Hell. They have no/very small eyes, and will drag an unwitting traveler into the river in order to have another hand to help with their chores.